Shadow magic is a branch of darkness magic that focuses mainly on manipulating shadows. When this magic is mastered, it will become a useful and versatile ability as long as shadows exist.

A shadow magic caster can dump anything into his shadow and uses it as a walking chest by using [Shadow storage] spell. If he wants to travel unnoticed or stalk someone, he can use a spell called [Shadow dive] to move inside a shadow. And if he wants to attack someone, he can also change shadows into weapons by using [Shadow blade] spell.

For Midnight who had been turned into a shadow cat after living for decades, she was very proficient in shadow magic. In fact, she could also use other branches of darkness magic if she had enough knowledge in the field. But when she was transformed into a shadow cat, she had learned how to use shadow magic by her natural instinct with a little help of some of her useful skills. [Shadow manipulation] and [shadow dweller] skills that she had acquired in the past had made up her name as the “shadow peeker” of the forest.

[Shadow manipulation] provided her with a power to control the shapes of shadows to some extent with very little mana consumption. This skill might not seem to be useful, but it had helped her a lot when she wanted to connect the gap between shadows together so that she could dive from one shadow to another in a single step.

[Shadow dweller] was a skill that made her able to stay inside a shadow as long as she wanted without feeling even the slightest unpleasant. Normally, a living creature couldn’t live inside a shadow for too long due to the difference in the conditions between the inside and the outside of a shadow. Inside of a shadow, gravity was several times higher than the outside and it contains much thinner air.

With this, one could stay inside a shadow for an hour at most if he had gone through a proper training; however, to Midnight, the dark and cramped space inside a shadow was like a comfy home. Staying in there, she felt like being massaged by the high gravity and the thin air was drier and more refreshing for her than the air outside.

As the result, she had spent most of her time dwelling inside shadows while observing the events around the forest in her safe zone. As time passed by, members of the forest had remembered her as “shadow peeker” as she would know almost anything that had happened inside this forest without anyone noticing her.

However, being a “shadow peeker” for decades had built up boredom inside her heart as she grew accustomed to the forest that had almost no change from the time when she was just transformed into a monster.

In spring, life would come back from the cold and deadly winter. Small and big beasts would start to mate and raise their offspring. In summer, grass and plants would become dry due to the heat and the wildlife started to part their parents. In autumn, leaves on the trees would fall on the ground while the beasts started to stock up their food for the long winter. And then there came a long and boring winter.

After that, things would just repeat itself and it was so boring for Midnight who had lived for decades to watch them over and over.

Although there was a problematic horde of intruding goblins this year around, she wasn’t interested in fighting them since she already knew that this forest had already lost to the goblins even if she were to give the wildlife of this forest a hand.

Nonetheless, things had changed that night when she met this interesting bunch. At that time, she was strolling in the dark night when she saw a dim light coming out from inside the trunk of a flute tree.

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At first, she thought that they might be humans which were rarely seen deep in this forest, but that wasn’t the case.

While she was betting if they were human, a strange undead with the skull of a dear came out from the trunk. She was so surprised. The shape of that undead was by no mean similar to what she had ever seen in the past. And she knew that there was still someone left inside the trunk when the undead came out, so she patiently waited for them until the morning.

Then she found an adorable boy. His hair was white, so is his delicate skin. He looked weak and powerless, but he gave off a powerful and attractive aura that made her felt attach to him. His small ebony horns emitted a pleasant dark-element aura while his shadow felt so comfy and made her crazy like the pleasant smell of a silver vine.

(Author’s Note: cats are addicted to silvervine and catnip plants)

It was like she had found a fated person whom she had been waiting for to help her get rid of this boredom. At that time, she had decided, if she followed this boy, she must be able to see more interesting things happened. So she offered to be his pet in order to forcefully make him allow her to follow.

And he had given her a name. It was midnight. She loved this. Shadows and darkness of the night was a good description for her glossy black fur. And in return, she was practicing him to use shadow magic as she knew that he had a good affinity to it, but he didn’t know how to use the spells.

“Concentrate, nyan, if you get distracted like that, you won’t be able to feel the shadows, nyan!,” Midnight lectured as she lightly slapped Oscar’s face with her mushy paw.

“You said that, but how could I do it?,” Oscar asked as he sat crossed leg and turned his face back to stare at his own shadow.

“You feel it like your own body, nyan, then you make it move like pwoooooosh and swooooosh, nyan!”

“That’s why it hard to follow!”

It seemed learning from Midnight didn’t help Oscar much as she only knew how to use a spell from her natural instinct. She could grasp the way to use her spells by her feeling, but teaching others to do the same as her was another story, especially when both parties had a different image in their mind.

“Will we really be able to follow Lunus at this rate? Isn’t it better to just rush after him like yesterday?”

Midnight gave him a sigh before hopping on his lap and lied down there.

“It depends on your progress, nyan. If you could use [Shadow dive] by tonight, we will catch up with him by tomorrow morning, nyan. But if master was to just rush there like yesterday, you wouldn’t be able to catch up to him, nyan. Since that guy was very very fast, nyan.”

Oscar made a gloomy face, “And now I fear that I won’t make it at all. Let alone using [Shadow dive], I couldn’t even move my shadow an inch…”

“That’s right, nyan…,” Midnight frowned, “Then we should find another way to train, nyan.”

“Well, it can’t be helped. We can also rush after Lunus like yesterday and start training while we take a break… Hmm? What’s it, Luna? Are you hungry?”

The white rabbit, Luna, tugged his vine cloth as she stood on her hindlegs and patted her tummy to show him that her stomach had been empty since this morning.

“Alright, wait for a sec and I’ll immediately bring your favorite berries out.”

He folded his palms while giving them a loose gap before imagining the image of things being decompressed. Then berries that he had prepared beforehand came out from the shadow of his fold palm as if they had appeared out of the void.

Seeing that, Midnight’s eyes grew wide while Luna was happily munching on her favorite berries.

“That’s it, nyan!”